Robal wondered if the Dhaurians made no distinction between adults and children because there were so few children. That sort of thing can happen when a people do not mix with outsiders. Their blood goes stale, and children are much harder to kindle.
‘Phemanderac, sir,’ he ventured, ‘are the people at a meeting?’
‘What?’ The man’s rheumy eyes struggled to focus. Clearly he had been thinking about something else. ‘No, I would imagine everyone is engaged in their duties. It is near mealtime, you know, and food preparation and cooking is a family task. There are not many people left on the street.’
The group turned a corner and began to climb a winding street. A main thoroughfare, if the depth of ruts in the cobbles was any guide. A few people hurried past, but to Robal’s mind still nowhere near the number he would have expected for a city of this size. Fewer, in fact, than frequented the streets of Instruere in the quietest hours of a night watch.
‘You say the people here are of one house and are organised into clans,’ Kilfor said. ‘We have clans on the Falthan plains. Are you familiar with our system? Does Dhauria work like Chardzou and the other wandering towns of Austrau?’
‘You know, boy, someone ought to board up your mouth,’ his father commented dryly. ‘How can a town of brick and tile wander like tented Chardzou? I despair of you. I should have adopted a snake as my heir, like your mother told me to. Plenty of clever snakes on the plains.’
‘What was that noise?’ Kilfor responded in mock anger, without turning his head towards his father. ‘Did the plains wind follow us across the desert, or has a camel just broken wind?’ He shrugged his shoulders in a what-am-I-to-do fashion. ‘I believe our host knows what I mean.’
‘Indeed he does,’ Sauxa countered. ‘He knows you want him to tell you that those who dwell in Chardzou are the purest of Falthan men, following as they do the example of the Dhaurians. Thus you can boast of your own culture.’
‘Pretty good, old man. But no, that’s what you want to know, in order somehow to justify a life wasted in the behind of beyond. I, on the other hand, am merely curious.’
‘Do these two always—’
‘Always, Phemanderac,’ Robal said. ‘Should a serpent of old scoop them up in its mouth, they’ll be arguing about the length of its fangs as they slither down its gut. There’s no stopping them.’
‘Ah. Then I’ll explain the place of clans in Dhaurian society as we walk, and perhaps the two men would be so good as to resume their argument when I run out of breath. This road gets steeper every time I climb it.’
Stella offered him the trap, but he refused. ‘I need to feel my feet on these cobbles,’ he said, then laughed. ‘Actually, I need to be seen. People need to know I am home again.’
The old scholar began to tell them about the clans, and Robal gradually stopped listening. He didn’t really care about the four great houses of men who came north from Jangela with the Most High, nor how they were divided into minor houses, then further into clans, each of which was allocated a responsibility. He let the words wash over him and focused instead on the few people walking by. The men were mostly tall, at least as tall as himself, and Robal was accounted large by Instruian standards. A surprising number of them had grey hair, although none looked ancient like Phemanderac—no, wait, there were two men approaching who were both using sticks to support themselves. They raised their sticks to greet Phemanderac, but did not enquire after the outsiders, though they could not have failed to notice the bonds between Stella and the little girl.
Robal wondered how old people grew here. There seemed an agelessness about the place, as though the city and the people living in it had been here forever. And still virtually no children in sight, he thought. Something about that wasn’t right, but no one else seemed to be worried about it.
The sun had long gone, but a faint glow still allowed Stella to see the lodgings they had been allocated. Before he had left for his own home, Phemanderac had explained that there were no inns or public accommodation in the city—indeed, it was a concept foreign to the Dhaurians. If you needed to stay, you lodged with a member of your clan. Outsiders stayed with the clan responsible for the gate through which they had been admitted.
The house they were guided to looked no different than any other: small, rectangular, single storey, with a tiled roof. Inside, despite an absence of furniture, there seemed not enough room for their party; two rooms and a washroom would surely not provide them all with sleeping quarters. How were they to be distributed?
As the five outsiders stood wearily in the unfurnished room, no doubt wondering much the same as Stella, men and women came through the door. They carried mattresses and pallets and, with an economy of movement, set up sleeping quarters. Four pallets in the larger room, two in the smaller.
Two? For a moment Stella had forgotten the girl bound to her arm. Of course, two.
Three men entered, bearing what were obviously heavy burdens wrapped in layers of cloth. They turned out to be stones, which were placed in the hearth.
One of the men approached them. ‘We have provided for you, as agreed by the binding of arms. Food will follow shortly.’ The language was the Falthan common tongue, but spoken in a stilted fashion, with as much warmth in the words as someone organising the removal of refuse from a kitchen.
‘Firestones,’ he said, following Stella’s glance at the hearth. ‘You do not use firestones?’ At her headshake he explained how they retained heat, and needed only to be fired twice a day. ‘We will attend to it,’ he said.
The man’s long face, so like Phemanderac’s in shape but so unlike in expression, bore a look of faint distaste. He probably thinks he is being polite.
Stella kept her thoughts to herself as their hosts returned with what she had to admit was ample fare: vegetable soup, warm bread and a selection of cold meats. Cold, she thought. Everything about these people seems so cold. How was Phemanderac born from such as these? And another thought: Were these people not the ones who had once received the Fire of the Most High? If she understood anything from the curse in her own blood, it was akin to the Fire of Life. So how did it not warm these people?
‘Friendly lot,’ Robal murmured as the Dhaurians left the room.
Conal snorted. ‘You would receive less in Instruere unless you had plenty of coin to pay for it.’
‘In case you had forgotten,’ Stella said quietly, her face reddening, ‘we still have company.’
Beside her the girl smiled, then reached her left hand towards a platter of meat, as though she hadn’t heard. Well, she is only a child. She might not pick up the nuances of our conversation.
Really, though, Stella knew she could tell little about what these strange people might know. If they trusted young children with guarding their gates, what might such a child be capable of?
These thoughts still occupied her the next morning as she and Ena dressed. Someone had laid out a robe in the Dhaurian style: full-length, white, of wonderfully fine material sturdier than silk but just as cool. Perfect for the warm day ahead. Ena allowed Stella to slip off their binding cloth while she put the robe on, then submitted to being re-bound.
Stella would rather the binding had been left off while they performed their ablutions. A series of necessary tasks made awkward and unpleasant due to the binding, and Stella found herself embarrassed as a stranger—a young, curious stranger—dispassionately observed her bodily functions.
‘You cried out in the night,’ said the girl, her voice sleep-laden and endearingly childish. ‘Who is Leith?’
‘Oh,’ Stella said; and, before she could stop herself, put her knuckles in her mouth. Who’s being childish now? she asked herself, and cursed inwardly as a tear leaked from her left eye and trickled down her cheek.
The girl just stared at her, her face a gentle enquiry, as though watching a weeping woman was a commonplace thing.
Stella put down the soft cloth she had been using to dry her face. ‘He was my husband,’ she
said. ‘He died not long ago.’
Ena bit her lip, as though caught in an indiscretion. ‘I am sorry for making you cry. My mother always says it is sad when someone dies young. Especially if they have not long been wedded.’
‘He wasn’t—’
He wasn’t young, Stella was about to say, but thought better of it. Too much to explain: how Leith had died of old age, yet she herself still appeared little older than a youth. Too many questions would follow. The girl didn’t need to know.
‘Did I keep you awake?’ she asked instead.
‘I’ve never slept away from my house before,’ said Ena. ‘Sinan said it would be exciting, but I was scared. The sounds are different upslope.’
‘Different?’ Stella asked, drawn into the girl’s small world despite herself. ‘Why, where do you live?’
‘Downslope, close to the Mist Gate. I sometimes come upslope to play with Phyna, but I’ve never been allowed to stay overnight.’
‘Ena, are all your family gatekeepers?’
Ena put down the twig she was using to clean her teeth. ‘The gate clans are responsible for all aspects of Dhaurian defence,’ she said, obviously repeating words she’d heard her parents say many times. ‘My mother is the sister-daughter of the clan leader, and is important, so we have been given the Mist Gate to guard.’
‘Has there ever been an attempt to invade Dhauria?’
‘No! The bad men don’t know we are here. My father says we don’t have what the Falthans want. But we still have to keep outsiders outside, he says. He has a big club. He’d go whack! to anyone trying to invade.’
‘But you let us in,’ Stella pressed.
‘Phemanderac stood for you,’ the small girl answered. ‘He is well known in Dhauria. He disobeyed by going out of the valley, but he came back and repented later, not like Kannwar. I like Phemanderac. He has a crinkly face.’
There was so much Stella wanted to ask as a result of these last comments, but Ena had clearly had enough of the conversation and tugged at her arm, drawing her in the direction of the main room, where the sound of cots being cleared away had been replaced by the smell of oatmeal porridge, or something close to it, cooking on the firestones. Someone had built a small, almost smokeless fire under the stones, and they glowed a deep red.
Stella shook her head. What sort of society would compare the wise, sensitive Phemanderac to Kannwar, he who betrayed the First Men and became the Destroyer, the Undying Man of Bhrudwo? How could Kannwar’s evil rebellion be compared to Phemanderac’s rejection of Dhauria’s cloistered halls in search of the truth?
The girl had said Phemanderac was well known, but why was he not fêted as a hero? Without his help Faltha would have been overrun by the Destroyer and his Bhrudwan horde. Did Dhauria care more for its racial purity than the fate of the world?
Stella nursed her porridge—much sweeter than she was accustomed to, but not unpleasant—and considered these things. Beside her Ena slid backwards and forwards on her seat, singing a rhyme to herself while banging her feet on a leg of the table, much like any other girl of eight years old and not the precocious child-adult she had seemed the previous day. Much of that precocity was no doubt due to her playing a part. Stella was pleased she felt comfortable enough to abandon it.
On the opposite side of the table Robal and Conal ate in silence, looking rather strange in matching white robes, as though they were partners in some exotic venture. As Stella glanced in their direction, she noted there was little eating going on: the men were transfixed by an argument that Kilfor and his father, Sauxa, had been working on since early this morning, if the content was anything to go by.
‘A troop of Piskasian water-monkeys after they’ve been overfed on bananas,’ Kilfor said.
Robal laughed at this sally. Conal kept a straight face, but his small eyes were lighter than Stella had seen in some time. The point of Kilfor’s statement was lost on Stella, who had not been listening.
‘Monkeys? You inherited your ears from your mother, along with your dress sense,’ Sauxa said, then sucked on his teeth as he thought. ‘I sound more like a treeful of songbirds.’
‘Old man, you snored so hard last night that the top half of this city collapsed and came rumbling down past us. And the only reason I know this is because I was told this morning; I certainly couldn’t hear the destruction over the noises you were making. I didn’t know what would make my ears pop first: the rumble from your gaping maw or the way you sucked all the air out of the room every time you took a breath.’
‘Tuneful.’
Robal coughed, then began to choke. He lost most of his mouthful of porridge in the process.
Kilfor twitched an eyebrow. ‘Tuneful? The citizens of Dhauria organised a bounty hunt for the horde of ravenous, deep-throated monsters loose on their streets. The number of times I was awoken last night by men tapping on the window, asking if I needed rescuing, it’s a wonder I got any sleep.’
‘Tonight you can sleep with the donkey then.’ Sauxa put on his most aggrieved voice.
‘Infinitely preferable! Indeed, why don’t I sleep with a roomful of them. Not only will it be much quieter, the room will also smell much better.’
Stella felt her own mouth twitching. Kilfor, a friend of Robal, had agreed to hide her from the Instruian authorities in the Great Plains settlement of Chardzou. However, he and his father had ended up guiding her to the desert track that led to Dhauria. Now they were here, she found herself enjoying their company but not knowing what to do with them. They would not be able to come with her on the next stage of her journey. Indeed, Robal and Conal had somehow to be persuaded to stay behind also. After all, what need did she have of guards when it was now proven beyond all doubt that she could not die?
Colourful descriptions of odours the Chardzou men had known—or created—gave way to comparisons of their intellectual capacity. Smiling inwardly, Stella eased herself up from her chair, forgetting again her ties to the girl next to her.
‘Sorry, Ena,’ she said. Heads turned. ‘I need some fresh air.’
This occasioned raucous laughter from Kilfor and Robal. ‘I’m not surprised,’ Kilfor said, sniggering and looking pointedly at his father.
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned about men,’ she shot at them as she and Ena got to their feet, ‘it is that their lives revolve around their own bodily functions. It doesn’t matter how long I live, I doubt I’ll ever discover anything more complicated about them.’
She hadn’t meant the last words to sting, but the men behind her quietened as she strode to the door and looked out on a Dhaurian morning.
‘Oh, my,’ she said. Beside her Ena smiled.
They were perhaps halfway up the hill upon which Dhauria had been built. Behind them the cliff stretched impossibly high, looking as though it leaned over them like some large, inquisitive neighbour. But it was the scene before her that took Stella’s breath.
The lower city, with its white walls, green trees and red roofs, spread out below her like a rumpled blanket, an effect enhanced by the patchwork fields beyond. In the distance the sea glittered, a thousand beckoning wavetops. Everything glowed with a golden light. The sunlight shines through desert sand suspended high in the air, Stella told herself. It’s a trick of the light. But it looked like a Bansila painting from the woman’s Spiritualist phase, when the artist imbued every living thing with a golden essenza, as she called it. Stella owned—had owned—four of her best works. The effect was achingly beautiful, but paled in comparison to what lay before her.
‘How can you stand it?’ she breathed, but Ena did not answer. Stella turned to her: the girl’s face was awash with light, and for a surreal moment the Falthan queen was tempted to fall to her knees.
A trick of the light. But she wondered.
A shout, a hailed welcome, and here came Phemanderac, drawn slowly up the street in a cart. Even her old friend’s familiar lined face appeared otherworldly this morning.
Stella extended her han
d and helped him alight.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said. ‘Forgive the cart; I did not sleep well. My back did not like the softness of my bed.’ Then he turned and greeted Ena with a smile and a kind word.
‘Why would you ever want to leave this place?’ Stella asked, indicating the scene before them with a wide gesture of her free arm.
‘It is a fine morning,’ he replied. ‘Worth taking a moment or two to consider. Were you to stay until autumn you would see true beauty. Although,’ he added with a smile, ‘Instruere has—had—one or two beautiful things of its own.’
‘Gallant,’ Stella replied. ‘Tell me, what is it I see?’
He pointed out the sights spread before them: the lower city, with its clan groupings, and further left, at the base of the hill, tall towers surrounding the Square of Sorrows. ‘Built in remembrance of that which was lost,’ he said, ‘in echo of the Square of Rainbows.’
‘As were the carvings inside the Hall of Meeting in Instruere,’ she replied. ‘Will we always be defined by what Kannwar did?’
Phemanderac had to know her words carried a personal meaning.
‘I imagine so,’ he said quietly.
‘Where was the old city of Dona Mihst? The Domaz Skreud said it was destroyed by the flood.’
‘The holy scroll is correct,’ Phemanderac said. ‘Look out beyond the shore—see there, where the sea sparkles so? The waves break there because there is a hill just below the surface. On that hill the Fountain once played, before the flood came, and around it Dona Mihst was built. Fishermen can apparently see the ruins of that place when the sea is clear. They tell of an enormous rent in the hill, a deep chasm from which comes a red glow, as though open to the earth’s deep furnaces. Sometimes the sea bubbles and boils, they say. I have never been out there.’
‘One of the few places you have not been, then,’ Stella said, taking his hand. ‘You are a hero, you know. All Faltha acknowledges the great debt you are owed for your part in the Falthan War. I cannot help wondering why you are not held in such honour here.’
Dark Heart (Husk) Page 15
